Boothtown

Not to be confused with Boothstown

Boothtown
Yorkshire West Riding
Bankfield Museum
Location
Grid reference:	SE088269
Data
Post town:	Halifax
Postcode:	HX3
Dialling code:	01422
Local Government
Council:	Calderdale
Parliamentary constituency:	Halifax

Boothtown is a Yorkshire village which has become a mere suburb of Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The village’s history was dominated by the mills of the textile industry. Rawson's Mill on Old Lane is now disused and designated as a listed building of heritage importance.

Boothtown includes Akroydon, a Victorian model housing scheme which was designed in the Gothic style by George Gilbert Scott in 1859 for the workers at the mills of Edward Akroyd. Akroyd's former home in Boothtown, now the Grade II listed Bankfield Museum and library, also houses the Regimental museum of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment.

Boothtown is on the A647 road from Halifax to Bradford. It is said to have been on this road that Percy Shaw came up with the idea of cat's eyes as an aid to road safety.

Society

The longest running Boys' Brigade Company in the area is based at Boothtown.

Churches

A Serbian Orthodox church stands in Boothtown; the Church of St John the Baptist. There has been a Serbian community in the area since the 1940s, when Serbian POWs and anti-Communist refugees from German camps arrived in Halifax in 1947. They needed a place to worship and were given a former Methodist chapel in Simpson Street to worship in. Closed in the 1950s, it was acquired by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1952. The building, which had already deteriorated, was repaired and renovated, and was consecrated on 26 September 1954.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Boothtown)